


Run Wild (The Who Let The Wolves Out Remix)

by akamine_chan



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/pseuds/akamine_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and her wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run Wild (The Who Let The Wolves Out Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Hunger in Waiting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3331466) by [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk). 



> Written for the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Day 6 - Create Your Own Challenge - in which I again challenged people to participate in a little Reverse Remix - you list fandoms you can write in and your DNWs, people volunteer their fic for you to remix.
> 
> I was given _Hunger in Waiting_ by Muccamukk to remix.
> 
> Beta work by Ande and Luce, as well as helpful comments.

Before they're forced to abandon Alaska, Mako tries to starve the wolf into submission. In their uncertain world, she needs to be in control of _something_.

She locks herself in her rooms at night, bars the door, and ignores the way she itches from the inside. She tosses and turns in her solitary bed, sweat-slick and gasping at the feel of cool sheets against her skin.

Mako _wants_ , craves the oblivion of another body against hers, but she denies the wolf, refusing to give in to even the touch of her own hand. When the change finally, _finally_ comes, it's almost a relief.

The wolf extracts her revenge, though, and when Mako changes back, she's scratched, battered, and bruised, shoulder dislocated, her rooms a wreck. She's exhausted, but underneath, the need still thrums across her nerves like summer lightning.

It takes days to scrub the blood off the walls, and her desk is a total loss, the leg splintered, chewed, broken, her papers and electronics scattered around her workspace.

The next month is worse; she retreats to her rooms when she's not working on the Jaegers and her hands shake and twitch. Stacker watches her with sad eyes, and Tendo Choi, never the most observant, asks if she's okay.

When she changes, the wolf _rages_. She throws herself against the walls of her rooms again and again, desperate to escape. The metal walls hold, and when she changes back, she lays on the floor, panting and exhausted, unable to move.

She ends up in the infirmary, Stacker looking down on her as the doctor tapes and stitches and bandages her. It's humiliating, being laid open like this, and she turns her face away when Stacker tries talk to her. 

The next month is worst of all. Her control is shot, she barely keeps herself from growling at her coworkers, and even simple human interaction proves to be too much for her. The wolf wants to fuck, and if she can't have that, she'll take the taste of blood and the feel of flesh between her teeth. The world is too loud, too noisy, the smells too much for the wolf, and she feels trapped by Mako's actions.

The wolf hates her, and Mako can't blame her.

Stacker calls her to his office, and she bundles up in layers of clothes to ward off the cold that lingers in the corridors. He sees too much, he always has, but Mako's stubborn.

"You can't go on like this," he says, voice gentle.

She lifts her chin wordlessly, and he sighs.

" _Yanagi ni yukiore nashi_ ," he says. Bend before you break. There's nothing she can say to that, so she bows respectfully and leaves.

The day before the change, Mako finds herself huddled in the tiny shower, biting back a scream. The wolf _wants_ and it feels like she's dying, bleeding internally.

The change is brutal, and she doesn't remember anything, until she wakes up back in the infirmary, Sasha Kaidonovsky sitting in the chair next to her, reading what looks to be a manual for the operation and repair of muscle strand engines.

"Hello, little wolf," Sasha says, and something inside of Mako eases a little for the first time in months.

* * *

The wolf notices the change in Stacker's scent, and it takes a while for Mako to identify it.

Once, the wolf had stalked and hunted a deer, a young buck. She'd broken cover too soon, her inexperience showing, and the deer got in a good kick before escaping. It had cracked a couple of ribs, and a bruise had bloomed along the left side of Mako's torso, black, blue, mottled green.

Now, she feels that kick again, the breath forced out of her body by a thunderbolt of pain.

What the wolf smells is Stacker's body turning against itself, individual cells growing malignant and reproducing, reproducing, reproducing. The steady unwinding of his DNA, subverting the biological processes, step by step, until they stop.

The smell of it makes the wolf grimace, and Mako wants to howl along with the wolf. He is all she has left of her pack, and she can't bear the idea of letting him go. Wolves aren't meant to be alone.

* * *

The first time Mako meets Raleigh, it's pouring rain and the wolf's sense of smell is dulled.

She huddles under her big umbrella, breathing open-mouthed, trying to _taste_ the scents lingering in the air, anything beyond the salt of the sea and diesel exhaust. The wolf growls, unsatisfied with her human body and its limitations.

Later, in the elevator, and in the corridors of the Shatterdome, the wolf scents him and almost recoils. Grief. It permeates Raleigh's skin, is sunk into his bones, surrounds him, marks him as alone.

Later, when they Drift, Raleigh _sees_ the wolf. He understands, and doesn't. 

It doesn't matter; for the first time, the wolf doesn't feel alone. _Pack_.

* * *

After the Breach is closed, the scent of grief hangs heavy over Sasha. The wolf bares her teeth, lips drawn back, shaking her muzzle and sneezing.

Sasha mourns, and her grief is deep and cold and endless, like a mountain pond. She's drowning in it. 

Sasha asks about becoming a wolf, and Mako laughs it off at first. It becomes clear, fairly quickly, that Sasha is serious.

Mako has to ignore the way her heart speeds up at the thought. 

Raleigh's already _pack_ , closer than a lover, more than family, but he'll never be a wolf.

Sasha, though. Sasha needs something _more_ to keep from being pulled under by her grief, something new to center her in the here and now. Maybe, in time, it will be enough.

"There is paperwork," Mako says carefully, and Sasha laughs through her tears.

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

>  _Yanagi ni yukiore nashi_ is a Japanese proverb. It translates literally as "Willow trees don't break under the weight of the snow."


End file.
